Classic Poem

The sweltering Summer brings her furious fires
And lights them on the City's iron hearth.
In the great corridors of streets, the blaze
Leaps high till every pavement trembles with heat,
As August feeds the flame from her deep store.
The rich—because our God is good to them—
Flee to the mountains' shelter or the sea,
Untroubled by the sudden waves of fire;
But the pale army of the poor must stay,
Though on their brows the scorching tongues are laid,
And blistering nights conspire against their rest.
The laborers march to their accustomed toil
In cavernous places where the hot sun pours
His molten beams; and on the asphalt droop
A hundred stricken horses every day.

At sunset, homeward move the dull-eyed throngs;
Some steal their broken slumber in the parks,
Some stretch upon the narrow fire-escapes,
Praying for one soft whisper of the breeze;
And the dim docks that kiss the river's edge
Are filled with families gasping for the air.
Here sits a mother with her sickly child,
There aged men pant in the livid heat,
While on the neighboring pier a raucous band
Hurls out its waltz for tireless youth to dance.
Forlorn and ragged refuse of the town,
Poor foreigners who sought our shore with hope,
Now literally upon that shore to dream
A sadly different dream from one now dead,
How my heart breaks for you this breathless night,
Swept here, unhappy derelicts, to stare,
Sleepless, while crawl the hot and tedious hours.

Here in the furnace City, in the humid air they faint,
God's pallid poor, His people, with scarcely space for breath;
So foul their teeming houses, so full of shame and taint,
They cannot crowd within them for the frightful fear of Death.

Yet somewhere, Lord, Thine open seas are singing with the rain,
And somewhere underneath Thy stars the cool waves crash and beat;
Why is it here, and only here, are huddled Death and Pain,
And here the form of Horror stalks, a menace in the street!

The burning flagstones gleam like glass at morning and at noon,
The giant walls shut out the breeze—if any breeze should blow;
And high above the smothering town at midnight hangs the moon,
A red medallion in the sky, a monster cameo.
Yet somewhere, God, drenched roses bloom by fountains draped with mist,
In old, lost gardens of the earth made lyrical with rain;
Why is it here a million brows by hungry Death are kissed,
And here is packed, one Summer night, a whole world's fiery pain!